When we try to understand someone's life, there are many ways to do so. We might ask the person themselves to tell us their story, we might delve into their work, or we might discover things that they missed through the people around them. In addition, one of the most important things that only an archive can do is to provide a window into the material that they have collected and kept for so long. The materials that the collectors collects at every turning point in their lives and cherishes even after a long period of time tell a deeper story than anything else.

The first exhibition of “The Collector's Film”, focuses on cinematographer Jung Il-sung and the materials he collected and donated to the Korean Film Archive. The Film Archive's work in collecting and preserving film-related materials is not just a matter of archiving the past, but a way of reaching out to cinephiles of the present and future.

Born in 1929, Jung Il-sung was a self-taught cinematographer who had been capturing the Korean landscape. After apprenticing as a cinematographer's assistant to Kim Hak-sung, he made his debut in 1957 and since then has worked with directors too numerous to mention, including Noh Pil, Park Jong-ho, Lee Sung-gu, Kim Ki-young, Kim Ho-jeong, Kim Soo-yong, Seok Rae-myung, Kang Dae-jin, Lee Won-se, Yu Hyun-mok, Ha Gil-jong, Ha Gil-jong, Byun Jang-ho, Lee Doo-yong, Park Cheol-soo, Bae Chang-ho, Ha Myung-joong, Jang Gil-soo, and Im Kwon-taek. Despite the different directors, the common thread in his films is the life and history who has lived through everything from Japanese colonization and liberation to the Korean War and division, military dictatorship and democratization. During the so-called dark age of Korean cinema, Jung Il-sung continued his dazzling filmography, including "The Last Witness" and "Mandala", with the determination to create works without regrets, even in the face of a major car accident and a cancer diagnosis.

In addition to being an expressive cinematographer, Jung Il-sung is also a faithful collector and documenter of Korean cinema, and a generous donor of his vast collection. His donations to the KOFA were 194 items in 1992 and 6,643 items in 2020, totaling 6,837 items. Jung's donation includes never-before-seen behind-the-camera footage of Korean cinematographers from the early 1950s, when he began his career as a cinematographer, to the present day, when he left behind a total of 95 films (according to KMDb) over five decades. The complete list of donations and primary materials related to 17 selected films will be on display in the lobby of Cinematheque KOFA for the duration of the exhibition.

 "The Collector's Film: Jeong Il-sung" is also meant as a reflection on the fact that previous generations of Korean filmmakers have been summoned only on retrospective occasions, focusing only on the director and not on the numerous crew members who make a movie. There is still so much we want to know about many Korean filmmakers, including cinematographer Jung Il-sung. With this exhibition, we hope to raise awareness of the importance of archiving and its implications more widely.